The picture above is a modern-day aerial view of the farm. It's a half-dozen years-old so it's not exactly up-to-date. But it's recent enough to give you a fairly good idea of the surrounding topography and what the landscape looks like nowadays.
The photo encompasses slightly more than six forty acre parcels. Ours are the two in the center of the map. Top to bottom it's a quarter mile across and a half mile in length.
The southern border is the county road where the house and buildings are located. The meandering tree line crossing north of the house is Silver Creek. The state tells us it's a navigable stream but most years is runs only intermittently. The tiny brown smudge - bottom center of the photo - is a pond we excavated. It was largely dry when this photo was taken.
The north property line is bordered by a narrow gravel road which dead-ends at the northeast corner of the property.
A word about dead-end town roads that are a half-mile from the nearest house and beyond earshot. Evidence of teenage whoopee and road hunting violators can be found from time-to-time. But that would be another story.
You can see the trail system - a bit over three miles in length. There are a couple of small white patches. These are wildlife food plots in the preparation stage. There is a larger white patch northeast of the buildings near the right hand border of the map. This is a field being prepped for planting into trees. It is in the northeast corner of my neighbor's forty.
Here is a photo of the same area taken June 13,1938-
The distinctive sofa-shaped woodlot at top center is a landmark little changed in more than 70 years.
Same for the location of the buildings.
The original farm house is gone. Sold to a flatlander before we purchased the joint.
A new house is now sited where the barn once stood. The two-hole shitter has been replaced with three flushers along with hot and cold running water and a mound system.
The concrete silo was demolished and buried to provide a vast underground den for the resident snake population.
The pump house (added after rural electrification) and a restored granary are all that remain of the original buildings. A metal sided machine shed houses my stuff and serves as the man cave.
Fields cultivated in 1938 were smaller in size and more numerous - a consequence of draft animals instead of large-scale mechanized farming. The rest of the surrounding area has gotten a little more over-grown as the years have passed. Elm trees used to be dominant but they succumbed to disease and have been replaced by ash and poplar. The ash may eventually surrender to the emerald ash borer. What will replace them?
There are stone piles located all over the property. The peninsula's shallow soils are littered with stones. A gift of the glacier. Many of the stones are scored - evidence of the havoc they wrought on plows. A few of the stones are not at all like the local dolostone formation. These igneous rocks traveled with the ice from reaches far in the Canadian north. How many children have had to pick rocks over the years without the assistance of a skid loader or a four-wheeler?
The landscape continues to change.
The few remaining farm operations are larger, fence rows fewer and extra acreage is under lease. Many farmers have retired and allowed their lands to naturalize slowly or they've planted most of it into permanent cover like trees. Some are selling their acreage in smaller chunks to folks in Green Bay who enjoy life in the country and a 20 minute commute on the new four lane expressway.
Fragmentation.
Good for the farmer who needs to monetize his landholdings into a comfortable retirement. Yet there are consequences. City people who complain about manure spreading, dust and other agricultural practices. And they close their land to hunting.
Hat Tip to TosaGuy for the link to the Wisconsin Historic Aerial Image Finder. It has led to hours of fun learning about the ever-changing landscape.
Take some time to discover how your local landscape has changed and might continue to evolve.
click on images to enlarge magnification
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Thanks for the link to that site...I've already discovered all kinds of interesting things about my area...like how there was a farm on one of the islands! Who keeps running a farm on land that has become an island?! And another island was used to graze cows! How fascinating!
ReplyDeleteI have a question.
ReplyDeleteHow do you know there are cows. Can you see them?
It is really easy to lose yourself look-up stuff with these archived photos. Hours go by.
There will be another posting on the other blog about the changing Tosa landscape.